As a student pursuing her master’s degree, Gloribert (Glori) Roque-Melendez’s career trajectory was shaped heavily by ISACA.
While closing in on a Master of Accountancy degree with a focus on Information Systems Auditing and Control, Glori and her classmates were encouraged by the program director at Bowling Green State University (Ohio) to become a student member of ISACA and take the Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) exam, considering how closely aligned their courses were with the CISA domains. While Glori didn’t yet have the required years of professional experience to earn the full certification, she passed the exam – a milestone that Glori said became “a major differentiator” in her early-career path.
Now, 20 years later, Glori has a different vantage point on the relationship between ISACA and academia, serving as a faculty advisor to the ISACA student group at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), where she also is a Lecturer of Accounting.
“Pay it forward, right?,” Glori said. “That’s definitely the plan there. It’s kind of like full circle. Now I’m here providing similar guidance that I got when I was in school but of course now with everything going on and some of the ISACA credentials not requiring experience, we’ve been trying to showcase the different opportunities that are out there.”
Today, ISACA offers the CISA Associate designation for students who pass the CISA exam without the required experience to become a CISA-holder. While that program was not in place during Glori’s days as a student, passing the CISA exam then – even without the ability yet to become certified – still made an impression on her first employer after graduating, EY.
“When I joined EY in the Assurance practice, people in the Advisory practice had an eye on me to pull me in, knowing I passed the CISA,” Glori said. “It was supposed to be a one-year rotation, and it turned into 13 years in the Advisory practice at EY.”
Glori then decided to step away after losing her younger sister, Sheiley, in an accident. At that point, her professional ambitions made a 180 degree-turn. If you asked her before 2015 about her career plans, her focus was to be a Managing Director or Partner at EY. Instead, she took time to be with her family in Puerto Rico and then moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, to explore the national and state parks near the US West Coast.
During that three-year hiatus, Glori frequently thought about her sister and how she could honor her by being purpose-driven. She decided to volunteer with the ISACA Las Vegas Chapter, first as part of the Nominating Committee, then serving as Treasurer (2021-2023), as President (2023-2025), and now as the chapter’s Immediate Past President.
It was through her involvement with ISACA that Glori connected with UNLV – first, attending student events, then serving as a guest speaker in several classes, and ultimately lecturing there as her full-time job. Glori teaches the Accounting Information Systems (AIS) and Accounting Data Analytics courses, with an emphasis on governance, risk and compliance in the AIS class.
Shortly after joining the faculty in 2022, Glori and her colleague and friend, Dr. Patricia Navarro-Velez, set in motion the formation of an ISACA Student Group (ISG) on campus. Initially, it was a challenge just to muster the minimum handful of students needed to form an official campus student group. Now, three years later, there are more than 100 members of the ISACA Student Group at UNLV, providing students opportunities to network with professionals in Las Vegas in addition to developing in-demand skills through workshops and a speaker series.
Seeing how far the student group has come is a major point of pride for Glori, but more than the headcount, it is the engagement of the students that energizes her most. She said the students do a great job organizing campus events and coordinating with the ISACA Las Vegas Chapter, and shared the example of a recent event focused on discussing careers in the IT audit space.
“I didn’t have to give them any contacts from my network,” Glori said. “They did all that themselves, so being able to see how it’s being run is just amazing.”
Supporting the UNLV ISACA Student Group – one of more than 175 ISACA student groups worldwide – is one of the priorities of the ISACA Las Vegas Chapter. Students are invited to attend quarterly events free, and there are touchpoints throughout the academic year to provide ideas on events and funding.
Given the value she found in ISACA as a student, the way the UNLV group has blossomed is especially meaningful to Glori.
“I can’t even put it into words,” she said. “Of course, I’m very proud of our growth, but mostly it’s the students – seeing them taking the leadership. At the beginning I was very hands-on, but as a faculty advisor, this is the students’ show. We are not supposed to tell them what to do, so it is great now seeing them take the lead at the different events they’ve been putting together.”
